SLUT. ALIENATION

by writer Juli Zeh

Chris Neuburger (SLUT singer and guitarist) once said that talking about music is about as fruitful as trying to dance architecture. One could add: talking about SLUT’s new album “Alienation” is the same as trying to suck in zeitgeist through a straw.
SLUT’s new album tastes of magnum opus. Authors have their books; directors have their films. In their 20-year-history SLUT have never gone wrong. On the contrary: they act with the sort of confident professionalism that remains a singular phenomenon in the field of German-but-with-English-lyrics alternative rock. With “Alienation”, however, SLUT have once more raised the bar. Music and lyrics pulse with that most fitting of German leanwords in English: zeitgeist. The impact of this century’s paradox and perfidious motto “create yourself and then be yourself” resembles a mental paraplegia. Instead of responsibly and creatively exploiting our freedom, “most of us turn petit bourgeois” – to quote from SLUT’s title song “Alienation” that simultaneously criticizes their car-obsessed hometown Ingolstadt (an Audi production site): „As long as the cars stay running they stay amused“.
There’s two ways to alienation. It’s either desperately clinging to what you know while the rest of the world moves on. Or it’s losing one’s footing in the desperate attempt to stay up to date in one’s compulsive struggle to re-define oneself anew every single day. How could one possibly be oneself in an era that constantly demands moving forward?
SLUT answer this question all over their musical oeuvre. They square their authenticity-circle by utilizing the familiar as a starting point for new explorations. In between records SLUT interpret a new version of Brecht’s “Three Penny Opera” or take me and my novel “Corpus Delicti” on “Schallnovellentour”.
This is what “Alienation” is trying to say: Do not ever decide between staying put or setting off or even between hiding-place or escape. Don’t get lost in “either-or” but find the power in “as well as”. Once more quoting from “Anybody Have A Roadmap” off of “Alienation”: “Go one and drive” and “Keep your eyes fixed on anything you seem to know“. “It‘s that love and hate relation that keeps us hanging on“ („Alienation“).
Musically, this attitude finds its expression in a confident sweep through styles and genres. In art theory “Alienation” stands for a new look on familiar things that allows for critical distance. This is exactly what the album does without relying on mere quotations. The band’s typical style remains distinctive and has developed into a musical personality that nonchalantly turns into every direction it pleases.
This is how SLUT enter the next level of polyvalency. The songs dispense with classical structures, change direction, surprise on all fronts and still find their way straight into the listener’s head. The basis to this is something I would like to call “modest opulence”. SLUT show what SLUT got without drowning the audience in orchestral waves. The means remain recognizable, each voice is distinguishable, each sound completely justified, each sound panorama accurately layered reaching the precision of electro-minimalism (“Broke My Backbone”) that builds an anthem loop on loop only to end with the sound of a bone saw. There a many ways to grow older most of which, quite frankly, suck. Each and every decision is a massacre of missed opportunities. SLUT and “Alienation” underline that a proper maturing process goes hand in hand with growth of vitality.

“Alienation” is a volume of many chapters – all of which tell the story of how to remain sane of mind and body on our journey through the 21st century and through one’s own biography. This music is a home – without the smell of stuffy cushions.
Buy this, be amazed, enjoy. Gotta go. Gotta dance myself a townhouse.